大象传媒

By 12.40 hours enemy tanks (reported as thirty in number) and infantry had worked into positions around the flanks of the gun position. From cap- tured maps it is also clear that self-propelled guns were being moved into positions at close range (about six hundred yards).All this time the Battery was engaging enemy infantry, machine guns, mortars, etc., who were closing in on the 5th Hampshire Company positions.(Some thirty tanks within such a narrow valley were considered to have been the equivalent of three hundred in the open desert, and equally as destructive. The
C.O. having been recalled to R.H.Q., called into our Command Post and said that we have them on the run,and to keep up the good work. However those Mk.1V tanks were very soon replaced with
Mk.V1s-Sabre Tooth Tiger Tanks - 56 tons of clanking metal, armed with an 88mm long- barelled gun and two heavy-calibre machine guns - at that time the most powerful tank in existance. Some of those tanks had come directly from Russia with their original crews. Col.-Gen Lang had himself come to Tunisia from the Russian front.He now commanded the German Barenthia Infantry Regiment,the 10th Panzer Division and 501st Heavy Tank Co. together with 8 Messerschmidts. It was said that Hitler had taken large numbers from the Russian front and sent at least 1/5th of his dive-bombers and fighter planes to Tunisia by mid-February 1943). At 15.00 hours a column of enemy infantry penetrated between Hampshire Farm (5th Hants H.Q. at Sidi N'Sir railway station)and the gun position and no more ammunition could pass.

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